It’s been 2 years since I’ve been to the doctor. 730 days for every part of my body to go wrong. But isn’t it always wrong if I know what I’ll be walking into at that doctor’s office? The wrongness of being fat.
If there is one thing I’ve learned from the discourses of this class, it’s that our bodies will forever be changing. So too will the conversation surrounding how we should exist in our bodies, if we should exist in them at all. Our bodies are marked by the same touch of vitality that gives us life, yet we are all subjected to its rule. Society demands it has the authority to rule over something so changing, so unruly. We know how this goes: Authority that demands really has no power at all. But the illusion of power proves authentic in our ignorant minds. If we can be convinced that are bodies need changing, need fixing, the authority that preludes us doesn’t need anything else. We have become the prisoners in our own mind. Change the word bodies, and the message continues to apply.
Let’s get back on track. The medicalization of fat bodies is the evil that I reference in this blog. If it wasn’t known before, we know now how people have been fighting for decades for the right to exist in their body indisputably. The Fat Underground of 1972 emerged after the 1967 protests in Central Park, where people (500 of them) gathered to eat, burn diet books, and ultimately exist as “loudly fat.” It is important to note that continuous efforts of fat equality isn’t just a result of societal ignorance — that is, even if society was completely accepting of all bodies, the conversation had in 1972 about bodies is not the same as in 2010, nor is it the same now. Our bodies are everchanging, and so is our body’s rhetoric.
The Fat Underground seemed to serve as rebellion, more so than the protests from before. This movement now had a target in hand, encompassed in the medicalization of fatness and those who aided in it: “Doctors are the enemy. Weight loss is genocide.” These words were cutthroat, and still carry weight with them (no pun intended). But how do these words help us now? Where does liberty and justice meet health and motive? It seems counterproductive for the fat community to reject all medical models by indirectly rejecting their health. It is based on the rational discomfort of stepping into a space that was not made for you, or me, or them. But I still did it. And so did you?
It has been 730 days since I’ve had a medical professional tell me what’s wrong with me, and yet I still sit with the guilt that I have no idea what is right with me. We can reject the pretenses that still make us small, but where does that leave us in terms of vitality? I conclude, in all two decades of my life, that if our medical models don’t serve us (not even just the fat, but the disabled, and the socially-determined “wrong) that we must create the spaces that uplift what is right with our body.
Maybe the action is not successful, but the rhetoric can be. If the Body Positivity Movement, outside of its target audience, is challenged by a fatphobic agenda, existence can no longer be the only protest. The voices behind the faces behind the bodies behind the fatness must coexist as one.
In 5 months, I’ll break my 2 year record. Here I come!
Unruly Bodies 
This is a really great post! Existing in a body that does not adhere to a very specific, often unattainable definition becomes so much more burdened in medical settings. There is a contradiction that would almost seem silly if it was not such a detrimental fact; we are subjected to this narrowminded, medicalized, viewpoint, and yet they have barely begun to study our bodies. We, as a collective and surely as an individual, are criticized for obeying the now-seen-as-harmful recommendations of a prior doctor, for being hesitant to blindly listen afterwards, for not standing up for oneself when irrelevant factors are blamed, and for speaking out against the incorrectly aimed accusations. To this point, I ask, are our minds truly ignorant, or can we license ourselves, as our own authority, to see that we have been misled? The definitions are synonymous, yet denoting that one has been misled or conditioned is more compassionate toward the self. It permits one to shift the blame of unknowing something so purposely hidden, allowing one to push it away from the self and toward those who have maliciously concealed it. Even when recognizing the hold of power and its falsities, one is still compelled to look inwards for a supposed fault that exists only in the minds of abstract authority.